The word is out: Mid-Hudson's a terrific spot to visit - and live

Monday

Aug 5, 2013 at 2:00 AMAug 5, 2013 at 10:27 AM

What do Vito Corleone, the Incredible Hulk and James Bond have in common, besides their worldwide notoriety? They — or more particularly, the actors who have brought these characters to life — all reside in the Hudson Valley/Catskills region.

BY JEREMIAH HORRIGAN

What do Vito Corleone, the Incredible Hulk and James Bond have in common, besides their worldwide notoriety? They — or more particularly, the actors who have brought these characters to life — all reside in the Hudson Valley/Catskills region.

Robert De Niro (Corleone) owns a historic farmhouse in Gardiner, Mark Ruffalo (Hulk) lives in Callicoon — and not a few women in the Stone Ridge area have been known to issue cellphone alerts when Daniel Craig (Bond) shows up at the local gym to work on his abs.

The region, once the province of robber barons and presidents, riverboat captains and quarrymen, has never gone out of fashion.

It's a region in constant renewal, its aging river communities hustling for tourists, its forests attracting developers and their opponents, its oldest industries struggling to match speeds with changing times.

And lately, the region has come under lots of national attention — The New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, The New Yorker — even The Hollywood Reporter, have written stories that directly or indirectly sing its praises.

But why now? What's the impact?

One way to examine those questions is to look at them through the eyes of key people involved in real estate, tourism and the arts.

For Harris Safier, his love of the region and of real estate began when he was 19. He moved up from Brooklyn and bought a ramshackle cabin in the woods in Kerhonkson.

That was almost four decades ago. Today, the principle broker for Westwood, Metes &Bounds knows a thing or two about the region and the county he loves.

Back then, the lure of the countryside, the possibility of a more relaxed lifestyle than was possible in the city, was catnip to him and tens of thousands of others who have migrated north.

Today, Safier says, it's much the same story, only more so. Technology — the Internet, Skype, you name it — has made it easier to keep working while making the leap from town to country. And those who do aren't buying ramshackle cabins in the woods.

Laptop-wielding weekend commuters grow weary of crawling traffic on the New York State Thruway every Sunday evening.

Telecommuting makes so much more sense. And after a while, Safier said, the urge to stay north increases as the need to work in the city decreases. That apartment on the Upper West Side is now a de facto pied-a-terre.

Last year, Ulster County showed a slight boost in the sale of upscale second homes. It's a trend he expects to see continue.

Sales figures aside, when Safier goes to spots like the Hudson Valley Coffee Traders cafe on Wall Street in Uptown Kingston, he sees another critical segment of the population: young people, and the energy they bring to their surroundings.

"I see these people in their 20s and 30s, and they're all working in the Uptown area. Big changes are coming — new and creative energy," he says.

Young people who may have launched themselves in sections of Brooklyn they can no longer afford have migrated here — lured not only by cheaper rents that buy bigger digs, but by the burgeoning cultural and social scene: first-class restaurants and bars set in architecturally interesting buildings and family-friendly attractions like the growing rail-trail network and the Walkway Over the Hudson.

In other words, some things about the region never change.

The energy that Safier recognized and became a part of in his youth is alive and well in Ulster County and the region today.

Mary Kay Vrba came to the mid-Hudson almost on a whim. A native of Nebraska who liked to travel, she realized in 1978 that she hadn't seen much of the East Coast.

"I thought I'd come out for a couple of years," she said last week.

A trip down the tree-lined, truck-free Taconic Parkway was all she needed to know about the area. "I took one look and said 'This is home,'" she recalls.

It's a home she's helped bring tens of thousands of other visitors to in her role as president of Hudson Valley Tourism — which represents 10 counties in the Hudson region, stretching from Albany to Westchester County.

There's definitely an increase in tourist attention these days, she said. Last year, tourism brought in $4.7 billion, up 100 million from the previous year.

Just as it is in the arts community and the world of real estate, New York City plays an outsize role in the region's tourism industry.

"Fifty million people visit the city every year," she said. "Many of them come two or three times. And at some point, they begin to look for something new and interesting."

Enter trains, buses and cars headed north to a plethora of attractions.

Beyond all those countless attractions, there's something else at work that Vrba says is easily noticed among visitors, something that keeps them coming back and maybe even settling permanently in the region.

"There's a real sense of place here. It's unmistakable. People come where they're welcomed."

Stuart Bigley came to the region — New Paltz, to be specific — at about the same time Harris Safier was homesteading in Kerhonkson. Bigley planted himself and his family on the road to a regional landmark: Mohonk Mountain House's beacon-like Sky Top Tower.

Since then, Unison Arts, the arts center he co-founded with his wife, has served as an important beacon of another sort.

It's been a beacon for artists of every description in what was at first the wilderness of a cultural community that was still taking shape. Though it's always been an economic struggle, Unison has been at the top of its game for years now. It might almost be considered a bulwark of the counter-cultural establishment that provided local artists with walls and platforms and microphones long before New York venues "discovered" them.

Bigley, who now devotes most of his time to painting, says he's seen a shift in the traffic pattern of the arts.

"These days, more artists live here and go down to the city to work."

The fact is, from the Catskills Mountain town of Woodstock and its music, film and arts scenes to the Delaware River hamlet of Narrowsburg and its galleries and film festival, the region is a hotbed of the arts.

It has been since at least the early 20th century, when artists founded the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony in Woodstock. World-famous residents like Bob Dylan, who lived right near Byrdcliffe, kept the tradition alive in the '60s.

"There are more artists per capita in Ulster County than anyplace outside of the City," Bigley said. "It's just remarkable."

That's a sentiment shared by one of the region's best-known artists. Actor and Oscar-nominee Mark Ruffalo could have lived anywhere in the world, yet he chose the Town of Callicoon in western Sullivan County, population 3,057.

When Ruffalo was voted Most Celebrated Local Person of the Year by Times Herald-Record readers last year, he wrote an acceptance essay as heartfelt as if he'd won that Oscar.

What drew him here?

The world, he said, is reflected in the region "as it truly is, not as it's found in Hollywood, "or NYC for that matter.

"This place, its people, their no-nonsense outlook on life, their self-determination, their hard work and pioneering spirit are what I love about living here and raising a family here."